After mulling things over, including a lot of very good suggestions in the comments to my last post on the Mumme Poll, here’s what I’m leaning towards doing:

There will be a final Mumme Poll for which the voting will take place after the BCS title game has been played.

Just as the Coaches Poll does, we will recognize the BCS title game winner as the undisputed MNC.

That means that the final ballot will be comprised of eleven, not twelve teams. We’ll vote for a top four and then the remaining seven top schools.

Anyone that’s been counted as a voter in any Mumme Poll this season is eligible to vote in the postseason Mumme Poll.

My reasoning is pretty simple here. First, I think we’ve already shown with the regular season results that approval voting is something that should be seriously considered as a means of reducing at least the appearance of bias and conflicts of interest in the voting by the coaches. I don’t think the postseason ballot is going to make any difference on this.

So what I’m left with is one aesthetic issue and one issue related to the experiment. With regard to the former, I don’t like the idea of having a tie for the number one slot at season’s end and I suspect that would be likely to happen, given the probability that the winners of at least three of the BCS games will appear on everyone’s ballots.

Speaking of ties, that leads into the second issue. I’d like to see if expanding the voting pool lessens the number of ties in the balloting (also, though not as important, I’m curious to see if it has the effect of expanding the number of teams receiving votes), which is why I’d like to encourage those that missed a vote to jump back in again. (Although I suppose by that reasoning, you could make an argument that I should let anyone vote who wants to participate.)

Let me know what you think about this. Bowl season kicks off on Saturday, and there is one ranked team in the action (#16 BYU), so I’d like to say at this point that unless I receive some very strong feedback to the contrary before then, what you see above are the ground rules we’ll be going by to finish out this season.

16 responses to “Mumme Poll postseason formatting”

Sounds like a good plan to me. Thanks again for creating this poll as I have really enjoyed participating in the experiment this season. I think we have gone a long way to proving the value of approval voting.

I do like the idea of approval voting all the way through. I don’t understand the logic of using the BCS title game as our de facto national champion when those participants are decided on a ranking system and not approval based system. I guess that’s the best option available to us, but I feel that we could maintain the approval ranking and figure out a way to factor strength of schedule or something along those lines to break any ties at the top.

So in the end we did all this to let someone else decide who the Mumme Poll national champion is.

That’s the problem here. At some point you have to let people rank teams. We couldn’t use our poll to put together a NC game unless we have some computer thing or something else to break the ties in the top five.

Maybe you can figure someway out to let a computer or something be an objective component to do that.

But think about it, we just did all this voting and at the end of the day, we’re still choosing what the BCS decided for us was the National champion. We didn’t decide that, they did.

It solved a lot of the problems with the polls, including some of the more infuriating ones. But what it won’t do with any more satisfaction than the existing polls is name a for-sure National Champion.

I like the idea of having a vote one time to avoid ties at the top. The 1, 4, 7 idea seems to make the most sense under the circumstances. I don’t know how much administrative time it would take on your part, but I wonder if we could make the final ballots public after the bowl games similar to the final coaches poll. If nothing else, we could all send our final ballots in on spreadsheets to facilitate the process.

Since I do not recognize any sort of National Champion for D1 CFB, mythical or otherwise, I also prefer just to have a vote for #1 with no recognition at all for calling anyone a NC until that title is earned on the field of play. Being voted #1 in opinion polls is different from earning a title. I recognize how small a minority I may be in, but I have to stick by my principles on this and I have never wavered before. To do otherwise is to grant the obstructionists to a playoff a victory.

I also feel voters who have participated in the Poll should be allowed to vote in the final poll. I do not think non-participants should be given a vote this year. I fully support an expansion of this poll, regardless of it’s name, to a more diverse group for next year. Keep up the good work Senator. By replacing one of my subscription sites with your blog, I have saved a significant amount of time daily while remaining current on topics of interest in CFB.

Senator, I have written a post in support of the idea at my blog. Obviously, I agree with the three tier idea. Hopefully, those on the fence will let you (or me) know why they are leaning one way or another.

Quote Of The Day

“The only thing he’s promised me is he’s going to play the best player and that’s the only promise I want,” (Justin) Fields said in an interview on WSB-TV. “I just feel like I bring another aspect to the game with my legs. They’re both great quarterbacks. Of course, they were five-stars in high school. They’re just like me, but I just feel like I bring something different to the table with my ability to run the ball. I always like a challenge, I always like competition. I feel like competition isn’t going to do anything but make another person better. I’m not afraid of a challenge.”– AB-H, 10/11/17